The Swiss Protestant Reformation
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Swiss American Historical Society Review Volume 40 Number 3 Article 3 11-2004 Introduction: The Swiss Protestant Reformation Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review Part of the European History Commons, and the European Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation (2004) "Introduction: The Swiss Protestant Reformation," Swiss American Historical Society Review: Vol. 40 : No. 3 , Article 3. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol40/iss3/3 This Front Matter is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Swiss American Historical Society Review by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. et al.: Introduction: The Swiss Protestant Reformation Introduction The Swiss Protestant Reformation th On November 28 , 2002 the innocent family Lieu awoke to begin another day of prayer, devotion and work in their hometown of Danane in the Ivory Coast, West Africa. However, at 9 AM gunfire erupted and rebel forces began dropping bombs on the town, announcing that the current civil war in the Ivory Coast had reached Danane, terrifying the citizens and traumatizing the Lieu family to such an extent that they and many of their neighbors resolved to flee, with literally just the shirts on their backs, into the jungle. For months they lived like animals in the wilderness until they were finally given asylum in a refugee camp in neighboring Guinea, under the protection of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. The only thing which stood between the Lieu family and disaster at this dreadful time was the help they received from Swiss and United Nations humanitarian organizations. The family's impoverished father, Mr. Dea Lieu, a farmer and a pastor, has made his way here to Hiwassee College in Madisonville, Tennessee, where he studies theology and agriculture and continues to work with the High Commission for Refugees in Geneva in order to find a way to bring his beleaguered family to America and, like so many emigrants before him, to find the American dream. We who know Switzerland well understand that this charitable treatment of the Lieu family is by no means an anomaly. We recall the Swiss government's decision to give asylum to 295,000 refugees during the Second World War (Rings 315). We remember the intrepid Swiss intervention in the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 resulting in mediation leading to the release of the American prisoners at the American Embassy in Teheran. We are astonished by the high priority the Swiss government continues to give to humanitarian issues: a quarter of the discussions at the National Assembly in Bern deal with refugees, asylum and human rights. 1 Indeed, were we to enumerate all the historical examples of Swiss humanitarianism, we should be required to try the 1 I have personally verified this fact during many visits to the National Assembly in Bern between 1990 and 2004. 5 Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 2004 1 Swiss American Historical Society Review, Vol. 40 [2004], No. 3, Art. 3 6 Review [November reader' s patience and to write volumes in order to record the endless saga of Swiss humanitarian intervention and charity for the needy in many countries around the globe. We in the twenty-first century are so accustomed to associating the concept of Switzerland with the concepts of good Samaritanism and asylum that it is difficult for us to conceive of the nation without these noble objectives. And yet it has not always been thus. The establishment of the just and neutral Swiss humanitarian state was a direct consequence of the great Swiss Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries . Not only could pre-Reformation Switzerland not help refugees ; it could barely help itself. Before the Reformation Switzerland was divided into six Episcopal dioceses: Geneva, Coire, Constance, Basel, Lausanne and Sion. As elsewhere in pre-Reformation Europe great social inequality prevailed. A poor population supported many privileged clergy, who were often negligent in their duties. The numerous monasteries were wealthy but unpopular , and the local bishops resisted any social change. The injustice of the Church's undisputed hegemony was exacerbated by the presence of a closed aristocracy, whose principal aim in life was to defend its social and economic position in order to create an even more economically advantageous situation for its heirs. At all levels of Swiss society during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries the families holding positions of power utilized public funds in order to promote their own private gain (Komer 365). In such an environment there naturally arose numerous popular uprisings. In the Swiss cities the principal instigators of these revolts were citizens who, fully able to perform governmental functions, were unjustly excluded from any participation in public affairs owing to the system of cooptation , which permitted the families of the aristocracy to monopolize power (Komer 372). These social disorders were evidence of popular resentment toward the absolutist tendencies of a growing ruling oligarchy. If the peasant revolts in sixteenth and seventeenth century Switzerland were violent manifestations of vast discontent , they did not however have as their objective the destruction of the existing social hierarchy . In the Swiss peasant revolts of 1523-1525, for example, the peasants were not seeking to usurp power or to get rid of the existing authorities. They were merely protesting against the excessive power of the cities, and they were demanding the reestablishment of the former more democratic juridical social system which had delegated more authority to the individual towns and villages. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol40/iss3/3 2 et al.: Introduction: The Swiss Protestant Reformation 2004] Introduction 7 This widespread social unrest in the early sixteenth century was intensified by the decision of the Bernese authorities at the end of the fifteenth century to abolish serfdom in the area under its jurisdiction, which led to extensive social and legal equality in the canton of Bern . This unprecedented Bernese democratic example whetted the appetite of peasants elsewhere for the enjoyment of similar democratic rights. The protests of these restive peasants were further encouraged by the preachers of the Reformation, who preached radical social reform, as well as by the Anabaptists' ideas concerning divine justice and men ' s equality before God (Korner 373). Moreover, the Catholic Church, a social and economic power , was considered to be a rival and an oppressive force by certain disadvantaged groups of the population. It was these latter malcontents who became the defenders and the agents of the Reformation movement, while the conservative privileged social milieux remained devoted to the Church's authority and maintained a skeptical and reserved attitude toward the new social and religious reforms. In addition to economic inequality , there likewise prevailed political inequality in pre-Reformation Switzerland. The country at that time was composed of three legally recognized states : the Confederation, the Valais and the Three Rhaetian Leagues (Komer 361). All questions of common interest were dealt with by the Federal Diet, which served as both a Congress of delegates and the supreme federal authority . In principle a resolution of the assembly did not acquire legally binding force until after ratification by all the individual cantons. Nonetheless the country and the forest cantons traditionally feared the power of this central Diet; they worried lest they become politically outnumbered and dominated by the Swiss city states (Komer 363). Thus on several occasions they rejected any attempt to fuse the loose Swiss Confederation into a single federal state. Finally, the new religious schism accentuated and aggravated the already smoldering social and regional antagonisms. Many at the time considered that the Reformation jeopardized the very existence of the Confederation. Onto this scene of social unrest and rebellion came three theologians whose influence would ignite a social revolution throughout Europe and the world: Desiderius Erasmus, Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli . Erasmus had been critical of the corruption within the Catholic Church long before the Reformation actually erupted, and yet he had been careful not to question the essential orthodoxy of Rome . A faithful Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 2004 3 Swiss American Historical Society Review, Vol. 40 [2004], No. 3, Art. 3 8 Review [November Catholic and a friend of Pope Leo X, Erasmus merely wished to purify the Catholic faith through closer study of the Church Fathers and the Bible and strove to restore the Church to the moral excellence it had known during the early days of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Martin Luther, on the other hand, openly broke with Rome and in 1517 attacked many of the traditions of the Catholic Church such as the sale of indulgences. Pope Leo X, needing the revenue that the sale of such indulgences provided, declined to order the abuse corrected (Runkle 186). By the summer of 1519, Luther had gone far beyond his initial position. He declared that the authority of the Bible was greater than that of the Pope, the Church and the Church Councils. In the summer of 1520 a papal bull of excommunication was issued against him. When Luther appeared at Worms, Reproduced by permission ofHein le before the Holy Roman Emperor Holy Roman Emperor Karl V. Charles V and the Imperial Diet, he had such widespread support on all levels in Germany that he had to be protected by a pledge of safe conduct. At Worms Luther refused to recant, uttering the now world famous words, "Here I stand. I cannot do Reprcxlucedby permissionof Heinle Luther before the Diet of Worms, 1521. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol40/iss3/3 4 et al.: Introduction: The Swiss Protestant Reformation 2004] Introduction 9 otherwise." Thereupon the Emperor honored Leo's condemnation of Luther as a heretic and placed him under formal imperial ban.